Short Poems

Zorn takes the short cuts with a Gallic " flair ,"
And seldom hesitates or beats the air.
A water-colour nude that bears his name
Is one to widen any painter's fame.
Of tone authentic and of treatment quaint,
It would arouse the Lady Grundy's plaint
Were she alive, but, as is known, she's dead —
Dead to the dainty, to refinement dead.

The Besnard colour schemes are pure and strong,
And beam with beauty like a short, sweet song.
His is the level of distinguished style
Without a touch or trace of book-won guile.
Style! that fair attribute of stately art,
That safeguards Fame and sets the strong apart.

The work of Duran lacks refining touch —
That bloom of perfect art that tells so much.
His portraits type the tawdry, and they please
The public eye, the public fancy seize.
A painting in selection sadly marred,
That, wanting unity, shows sharp and hard,
Constrained and vulgar, with a bourgeois air,
Has, with the masters, neither lot nor share.

The long and sultry question of the Nude —
That theme to fire the fancy of the prude —
Is not so much a problem of the part
As of the whole, the perfect thing, in art.
The hidden ever hints of the unclean,
The lewd retreats in presence of the seen.

Roll paints the play of sunlight on the grass
In racy style, and he can paint a lass
Naked and glad and glowing like a rose
To mark the Line of Beauty in repose.
His leaf-fring'd witchery with woodland scenes
Where chequered sunshine glints the golden greens
Is worthy of the haunts where wood nymphs roam
And, with the Pagan painters, find a home.

With Worldlings, ever reticent of speech;
With her own people, Folly's prone to preach.
Oft at the tender twilight's peaceful pause,
Careless of censure, as of cheap applause,
She seeks the lonely haunts of workingmen —
Some sculptor's, painter's, priest's, or poet's den —
And wiles the dolorous midnight grief away
With words of cheer that Wisdom dare not say.

As it was written in the Book of Fate,
The ranting rabble loves the second-rate;
For the one touch that makes the whole world kin —
Vulgarity — is commonplace as sin.

Men do a thing because they find it pays;
But payment follows in uncounted ways.
The blaze of gold beguiles the worldly-wise;
But Genius looks beyond the dollar prize
Unto that better prize, not made with hands,
Born of the sovran Spirit's high commands;
Serenely sure, tho' jesting Pilates doubt,
The prize is from within, and not without.

The mental toiler marshals from his brain
Its finest music, its diviner strain,
Or he but plays the charlatan, and seeks
To bilk achievement with commercial freaks.
Yet, tho' he win the plaudits of the mart,
Fame, incorruptible, still stands apart;
And, clearer than the chatter of the Crowd,
Her Silence rises, sombre, stern and proud.

To draw is not to moralize but see —
External beauty is the painter's plea.
His aim, indeed, is Colour, Form and Line.
A master can make many themes divine —
But to limn anecdote as wittols may
Is to employ the unpictorial way
Of making Subject serve for lack of Style,
In mode as easy as a brushman's guile.